Reviews Word on the street for the AMD A8 3850

A sampling: In 3DMark 11, scores of 1,697 and 1,028 at the Entry and Performance presets respectively rose to 1,887 and 1,134; and H.A.W.X. 2 soared to 58fps and 54fps at 1,024 by 768 and 1,280 by 1,024, respectively.

Performance

Technical specifications and impressive engineering feats are all well and good, AMD has always been pretty good at creating decent technical achievements, but not so hot at delivering performance product.

Gpu

Second, the APU lets you access AMD's new Dual Graphics technology to "combine" the power of a discrete GPU with the integrated graphics; this only works if your system is configured correctly on both the software (you'll need the AMD Vision Engine Control Center running) and hardware (the video card must be relatively low-end, and if you're only using one DIMM of memory, the whole thing might not work) sides, so be sure your PC meets all the requirements before trying it out.

First, if you have a discrete GPU installed, the APU will by default function as the boot-up video adapter, meaning any displays connected to a video card won't work until Windows loads the proper video drivers.

Multicore

That marriage was not fully consummated until this year, and Intel's January release of its mainstream second-generation Core (aka "Sandy Bridge") chips meant AMD's competitor brought together CPU and GPU functionality within a single die first (but just barely).